Microsoft Live Labs Volta

Volta is an experimental developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications, developed at MicrosoftLive Labs. It allows developers to split their application easily into different client and server parts throughout the development lifecycle. Volta integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, supporting AJAX, JSON and more. It extends the .NET platform to software as a service (SaaS) applications, by using existing and familiar libraries, languages, tools, and techniques.

On September 8, 2008, Microsoft took the project page offline, "while we make a few changes." Despite assurances on the page that "the technology will be available again soon", it has not yet returned. While continuing to make the software publicly unavailable, Microsoft Research has published an academic paper dated November 18, 2008 based on a framework built entirely on top of Volta.

Microsoft Live Labs

Microsoft Live Labs was a partnership between MSN and Microsoft Research that focused on applied research for Internet products and services at Microsoft. Live Labs was headed by Dr. Gary William Flake, who prior to joining Microsoft was a principal scientist at Yahoo! Research Lab and former head of research at the Web portal's Overture Services division.

Microsoft Live Labs was formed on January 24, 2006. On October 8, 2010, Microsoft announced the shutdown of Live Labs and the transition of its remaining team of 68 to Microsoft Bing. As a consequence Live Labs' original founder and leader Dr. Gary William Flake has resigned from Microsoft.

Projects

The following table shows all of the projects that had been initiated by Microsoft Live Labs:

Windows 10

Windows 10 is a personal computeroperating system released by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was officially unveiled in September 2014 following a brief demo at Build 2014. The first version of the operating system entered a public beta testing process in October 2014, leading up to its consumer release on July 29, 2015, and its release to volume licensing on August 1, 2015. To encourage the adoption of Windows10, Microsoft announced that during its first year of availability, upgrades to the operating system would be made available free of charge to users of genuine copies of eligible editions of Windows 7, and Windows 8 after update to Windows 8.1.

Windows10 introduces what Microsoft described as a "universal" application architecture; expanding on Metro-style apps, these apps can be designed to run across multiple Microsoft product families with nearly identical code‍—‌including PCs, tablets, smartphones, embedded systems, Xbox One, Surface Hub and HoloLens. The Windows user interface was revised to handle transitions between a mouse-oriented interface and a touchscreen-optimized interface based on available input devices‍—‌particularly on 2-in-1 PCs; both interfaces include an updated Start menu that blends elements of Windows 7's traditional Start menu with the tiles of Windows 8. The first release of Windows 10 also introduces a virtual desktop system, a window and desktop management feature called Task View, the Microsoft Edgeweb browser, support for fingerprint and face recognition login, new security features for enterprise environments, and DirectX 12 and WDDM 2.0 to improve the operating system's graphics capabilities for games.

Windows 7 was primarily intended to be an incremental upgrade to the operating system intending to address Windows Vista's poor critical reception while maintaining hardware and software compatibility. Windows 7 continued improvements on Windows Aero (the user interface introduced in Windows Vista) with the addition of a redesigned taskbar that allows applications to be "pinned" to it, and new window management features. Other new features were added to the operating system, including libraries, the new file sharing system HomeGroup, and support for multitouch input. A new "Action Center" interface was also added to provide an overview of system security and maintenance information, and tweaks were made to the User Account Control system to make it less intrusive. Windows 7 also shipped with updated versions of several stock applications, including Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player, and Windows Media Center.